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Those major projects will still be reviewed, but Ottawa is merely dropping what Oliver and Environment Minister Peter Kent say is unnecessary “paperwork.”

The 2012 federal budget led to a change in regulation that means nationwide, nearly 3,000 proposed developments will no longer be subject to a review for potential environmental damage by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA).

In Ontario, as the Star reported, the list includes six proposals from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to decommission a plutonium recovery laboratory, to decommission a waste water evaporator, to clean up two “legacy landfill areas,” and to build and operate “a new dry storage system for used fuel and non-fuel waste”— all in the Chalk River area.

The public should not be concerned by the decision to end those CEAA reviews, said Oliver.

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In the case of Chalk River, he said the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will still conduct a “comprehensive science-based environmental screening of these . . . projects.

“There’s no diminution in the reviews nor is there any offloading.”

The minister, clearly concerned about the potential public perception the federal government was shirking its environmental responsibilities, contacted the Star to characterize the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s role in overseeing the industry as unnecessary.

“That isn’t an actual review, it’s a sort of administrative process which doesn’t actually review anything. What we’re doing is getting rid of some of the paperwork but the actual review was always done by the Canadian Nuclear Safety commission and will continue to be done.”

Ottawa has also dropped the CEAA assessment of a proposal by TransCanada PipeLines to build a 13-kilometre pipeline as part of an expansion that would cross the Credit River and, according to Greenpeace, 15 other waterways.

The minister’s office clarified later that the Eastern Mainline Expansion project has, in fact, already been reviewed by the NEB, which concluded May 22 “that the project is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.”

Another pipeline project proposed by Enbridge would reverse the flow of crude oil in its Line 9 pipeline in Sarnia. Hearings had already begun into this project but were cancelled when the changes to the act came into force last month.

As for the Ontario pipeline projects, Oliver suggested the National Energy Board would still review them, just as he said the board will review the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal to carry crude from Alberta to the B.C. coast for shipping.

“We’ll let the regulator decide it,” Oliver said of the massive western project that has stirred such public controversy.

Environmental law expert Stephen Hazell said Oliver and Kent are only painting half the picture. While it’s true the biggest projects will still have some environmental oversight, “many, many small projects have big, big environmental effects.”

Hazell, in private practice, said the federal government is wrong to suggest that projects are still subject to “strong federal environmental protection laws and regulations” under statutes like the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Fisheries Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, and the Species at Risk Act.

“The reason Parliament decided to enact the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 25 years ago was because the existing regulatory processes were not assessing the environmental effects of development projects properly.”

Greenpeace Canada spokesman Keith Stewart said it’s not good enough to know the NEB will conduct an environmental assessment of pipelines, given that the government has granted itself the power to make the final decision.

“It’s simply not the same,” said Stewart. “It is difficult to take Minister Oliver’s assurances seriously, given that his government just changed the law so that cabinet can overrule the NEB. They have needlessly politicized the process and removed requirements for decisions to be made in a public and transparent manner where citizens can have their say.”

The list of cancelled Ontario environmental assessments includes the following projects: a new sewage facility on Cornwall Island on the St. Lawrence Seaway; changes to the military’s ultra secretive elite JTF2 training facility at Dwyer Hill, near Ottawa; road reconstruction of a 1.2 km-long segment that passes in front of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s home at 24 Sussex Dr.; plans to expand the queuing plaza at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel border-crossing; a 6.5 megawatt run-of-river hydroelectric generating station at Atikokan on the Namakan River; numerous proposals for upgrades and shoreline stabilization along the Trent Severn Waterway; plans to build new military training facilities at Borden; proposed hydroelectric facilities on the Namewaminikan River; an upgraded fuel depot station at Bearskin Lake; construction and restoration projects in Bruce Peninsula National Park; and a new 75 megawatt hydroelectric generating station on Little Jackfish River.

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